Study: No Link Between Racial Prejudice and Opposition to Immigration

Racial prejudice among the British public is lower than five years ago, according to a new study. The British Social Attitudes Survey found that prejudice has dropped from 33 percent of the population in 2009 to 30 percent in 2013.

The study also found that the vast majority of respondents want immigration reduced, including almost three quarters of people who reported holding no prejudice.

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The survey asked respondents whether they were “racially prejudiced”, giving the options of “very prejudiced”, “a little prejudiced” and “not prejudiced at all”. The figures for prejudice are taken from adding together the responses for “very prejudiced” and “a little prejudiced”.

Among party-political affiliation, ‘other’ parties lead for the first time. The Conservatives record the highest amount of prejudice for an individual party (39), with Labour in second place (24) and the Liberal Democrats in third (18).

All the main parties have seen their levels of racial prejudice drop, yet the percentage of prejudice among people who identify with ‘other’ parties has shot up from 12 percent in 2000 to 41 percent in 2013 – in correlation with Britain’s open border immigration policy and numbers from the European Union.

There also appears to be little relation between attitudes to immigration and attitudes to race. While 92 percent of people who report “some racial prejudice” want to reduce immigration, 72 percent of people with “no racial prejudice” also want to reduce it. Only five percent of people with no prejudice want to increase immigration.